


Homesick as an Astronaut

by pressdbtwnpages



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-13
Updated: 2011-06-13
Packaged: 2017-10-20 11:16:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/212192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pressdbtwnpages/pseuds/pressdbtwnpages
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lee didn't run when Gianne told him she was pregnant; he married her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homesick as an Astronaut

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song “Danny Callahan” by Conor Oberst. Written for the Lee Adama Ficathon at leeadama_daily.

Zak tells Lee that he failed basic flight. No one else knows but Kara who gave him the option of washing out of flight school before she submitted her grades. He’s thinking about maybe being a teacher. Zak likes kids.

Weirdly, that’s Lee’s first thought when Gianne grips his hand in her sweaty one and tells him she is pregnant. Lee thinks “Zak likes kids.” And then he thinks of Zak and Kara - so happy and in love even though they keep pushing back their wedding - and gets down on one knee to propose to Gianne.

When they tell Kara and Zak, Kara laughs loud and brilliant and suggests a double wedding. Gianne smiles mildly, one hand on her abdomen.

In point of fact, they get married 18 hours apart, Zak and Kara in a civil ceremony on Friday afternoon with Lee and Gianne as witnesses, Lee and Gianne on Saturday morning in front of God and everyone they know. Zak jokes about being the respectable brother, why is he the one skulking about getting married in secret? Kara slugs him hard in the arm and Lee knows she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Gianne’s pleasant. They all try very hard for Lee’s sake.

When she dies in childbirth, everyone is stunned. Those sorts of things don’t happen these days. Still, no one manages to be too torn up about it.

Lee shows up at Zak and Kara’s officers cottage on base holding a tiny pink bundle. It’s raining and Lee’s black wool coat is soaked through. He doesn’t do anything in half measures.

Kara hands the baby to Zak, takes Lee’s coat, and drags Lee into the kitchen. She pours him a shot. Kara doesn’t do babies and tea.

“What am I going to do?” Lee asks once he’s on his third shot, sandwiched between Kara and Zak. “I don’t know what to do with a baby.”

“You’ll stay with us,” Zak says firmly. “Between the three of us we can figure out the baby thing.”

“But you guys have your own lives. Eventually you’ll want your own kids.”

“No,” Kara says quietly. Zak reaches around Lee to put a hand on Kara’s shoulder.

It strikes Lee as surprising, that there are things about Kara that Lee doesn’t know and Zak does. That they’re a real live grown up married couple.

“I’m sorry,” he says awkwardly. “I didn’t know.”

“It’s fine,” Kara insists. “Kids just aren’t in the game plan. Except for baby Anne.”

The year that follows is the happiest of Lee’s life.

He thinks that maybe this is what the academy and War College were supposed to feel like. Living with his best friends, sleepless nights, and laughing harder that he’s ever laughed in his life. He’s got his beautiful baby girl, and Zak, and Kara, and if sometimes he leans too close to Kara or his hand lingers too long on Zak, well then Lee’s not the only one guilty of it.

It ends, as all good things do, abruptly. The ringing of a telephone shattering their peaceful life. The military beckons, Lee’s deferred battleship posting now come due. He has no idea what he is supposed to do, short of flee.

“Kara’s a flight instructor, I’m a wash-out,” Zak says flatly. “What do you mean you don’t know what to do? We can hold on to Anne for awhile.”

Lee looks across the room at where Kara is trying to feed the baby.

“Kids were never part of the plan,” Lee echoes Kara’s long ago words.

“Plans change, Leland!” Kara calls out cheerfully as Anne tugs the spoon out of Kara’s hand and splatters pureed peas everywhere..

It makes his heart clench. He loves his family so frakking much. Being away from them for the next three years might just kill him.

Zak must see something on his face that gives him away because he puts his hand on Lee’s shoulder and squeezes. “There’ll be shore leaves and a million ship-to-shore calls. It will be fine, you’ll see.”

Kara scoops Anne up and walks over to them, wrapping her free arm around Lee’s waist. “We’re all tough. We can do this.”

Six months later, Lee doesn’t think he can do this, and tells Kara as much. He’s missing all of his daughter’s firsts, in addition to Zak and Kara’s lives.

Kara laughs at him.

“I’m serious,” Lee says, offended. “I miss you so much it hurts.”

“Aww, I know,” Kara coos at him like he’s his 18 month old daughter. “You’re just an idiot, is all.”

“Kara...”

She sighs. Lee can picture her blowing her hair out of her face impatiently. “Listen, your dad’s ship is being decommissioned.”

“I know. I’m being ordered to go to the ceremony and fawn over him.”

“You know who else has to go?”

It hits Lee all at once, and he does feel like a moron for not realizing sooner, “You guys will be there?”

“Well, technically, Zak’s the only one who’s been asked, but I can finagle an invite. I am the commander’s daughter-in-law. And I can hardly leave my baby niece at home.”

“Kara.” Lee’s voice comes out choked.

“We’ll see you soon, Lee.”

*

The shuttle Anne, Zak, and Kara are on takes entirely too long to reach the Galactica and Lee paces the hanger deck while his father waits patiently.

Lee wonders if the commander was ever this desperate to see his family or if his heart was always back in CIC.

The Colonial Heavy 798 finally arrives, but then there’s pomp and ceremony for the Secretary of Education and Lee thinks he might actually explode from anticipation and impatience before he spots his brother. Zak’s gingerly making his way down the gangplank, Anne in his arms and Kara at his back.

With conduct entirely unbecoming a captain in the Colonial Fleet, Lee sprints towards them, knocking the four of them together in a laughing tangle.

They’re all grasping hands and awkward lips and Anne shrieking “Dada! Dada!” in delight.

It takes them forever to get untangled and for Lee to figure out how to comfortably hold his daughter who has gotten giant in the time Lee has been away, so by the time they’ve all gotten situated, the commander and the press are waiting.

“Dad,” Zak leans over to hug his father, cameras flash. Kara kisses the commander’s cheek. Cameras flash. The Adama men are instructed to stand together. Kara takes Anne. Lee’s arms are still stretched towards his daughter when the cameras flash. “Stand closer.” Cameras flash.

There’s still no time to catch up with his family before Lee’s back in his flight suit to take part in the honorary demonstration.

The worlds end. The worlds end, but Lee’s still flying, the Galactica’s still flying, and most of the people Lee loves are on that bucket.

The next few hours are chaos, Lee boarding Colonial Heavy 798, inaugurating a president, forming and then abandoning a fleet, before making it to Ragnar Anchorage and back to the Galactica.

Kara is underneath a viper when Lee lands, and she hits him when he helps her up off of the deck.

“We thought you were dead, Lee.” She says, voice cracking. “We didn’t know what to tell your daughter.”

Lee hates that he has scared Kara like this, to say nothing of baby Anne.

“What did you tell her?”

“Nothing, yet. We kept - I kept praying that it was a mistake that somehow you’d managed to survive.”

Lee can’t help grin at his indefatigable best friend. “You were right.”

“Thank the Gods,” Kara says pointedly. “We have to go tell Zak and your father you’re alive. They’re devastated, Lee.”

“And it would be nice to see my kid for more than five seconds,” Lee mutters, but Kara is already halfway across the deck.

*

The commander has installed them all in a very nice suite of rooms usually reserved for visiting admiralty, Zak and Kara having apparently fiercely insisted that Lee and Anne would not be bunking alone.

When Kara barges into their new home, Lee hot on her heels, Zak’s sitting on the couch, face pale, holding Anne while she plays. The admiral is sitting across from them, watching Anne as if she is some exotic creature with which he has only a passing familiarity.

Anne is the first to react, waving her hands in the air and shouting “Dada!”

Lee leans down to scoop her up, throwing an arm around Zak for a quick hug as he does so. “It’s alright, I’m alright.”

“Thank the Gods,” Zak breathes, relinquishing Anne.

“Lee. You’re alive? We thought that Colonial One had been destroyed by Cylons,” the commander tells him.

“Sorry to disappoint,” Lee says mildly. He’s far more interested in the little girl in his arms, smoothing down her blonde ringlets and poking at her dimpled cheeks.

Kara clucks her tongue at him but doesn’t have time to do more before all pilots are being summoned to the flight deck over the PA system.

On instinct, Lee turns and all but throws Anne to Zak before he and Kara are running down Galactica’s halls.

He can hear Anne wailing behind them, but instead of making Lee want to go back to her, his daughter’s tears spur him on. His family - maybe the only family in the Colonies - is alive and whole and he’ll do whatever it takes to keep it that way.

“Good hunting, Lee!” Kara shouts as they hit the flight deck.

“You too.”


End file.
